


The Space for This

by paintstroke



Series: It's only a weekend away [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Camping, Comfort, Confessions, Feelings, First Kiss, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Hiking, M/M, Mutual Pining, POV Alternating, POV Second Person, RST, Recovery, Reflection, Sex, mentions of past shiro/adam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:28:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24866068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paintstroke/pseuds/paintstroke
Summary: The Paladins’ return to Earth wasn’t what they had been anticipating. While some found reunions and hope among the devastation, others weren’t so lucky. It should be a time for healing, but as the battle wounds fade, Keith starts to feel more and more unmoored. Everything he remembered has changed. Everything, except for what he feels for Shiro.It should be a relief to be back. But for Shiro, the hallways of the Garrison are haunted with memories of people that are no longer there. Shiro throws himself into his work, nearly buried by the expectations placed on his shoulders. When Keith's attempts to find a connection with Earth all seem to fail, Keith starts to realize that his need to find a sense of ‘home’ may not be tied a need to reconnect with a memory at all.[“Uncertain Footing” is a prelude of sorts, but “The Space for This” can be read as a stand-alone.]
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Series: It's only a weekend away [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1799236
Comments: 47
Kudos: 54





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Set after the frantic battles they face on their return to Earth in the last episodes of Season 7 and before Luca’s robeast is dredged up from the sea floor. Canon timeline–compliance may vary; as much as I love these characters, my tolerance of later seasons is minimal. 
> 
> Title from Cynic’s [The Space for This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZUHSXcpqDA).

* * *

Shiro

* * *

  


With Keith’s eyes shut and the monitors droning with steady pulses, reassuring you that he was still asleep, you feel brave enough to reach out. There’s no one around to judge your gesture. It’s instinctive to lift your right hand, but even after the replacement you don’t dare use the prosthetic. Not with him. Not after… 

But you don’t let yourself think about that.

Gently, you try to smooth his hair away from the bandages with your left hand, but it’s as stubborn as he is, stiffly returning to the defiant flips around the gauze. His lengthening mullet still managed to raise a middle finger to fashion trends. Keith doesn’t move though, doesn’t react. You keep hoping that he’ll wake up. You place bets against the stream of ships outside of the Garrison Hospital window—he’ll wake up after three more land. Or five take off. But you lose the bets when Keith doesn’t stir.

The coma persists, and you know enough about medicine to be worried about that. When they find you sitting in his room at night, the nurses often reassure you that it’s his way of healing himself, that the damage is repairing at a good pace. You long for the regeneration pods from the Castle, but that technology is still out of reach here on Earth. 

Every so often you really look at him, at the broadened shoulders under the thin hospital sheet. Too much of your life has been skipped over between the years you don’t remember, and the time that passed for him but not for you.

This time, you have the chance to slow down. To really sit with your feelings, to think about what’s happened in the last handful of years. It makes you feel so damn alone. The longer that Keith stays unresponsive, the more that you fear that there’s a distance between you, a chasm that’s growing larger, as inexorable as the atoms of the universe spreading out from that long-ago explosion. He’d often been the one that could face down the bleak voices in your head. Without him to temper your dark thoughts, they range freely. 

If you’re honest with yourself, you’re terrified that there won’t be any way to repair the distance. You survived by making yourself numb, by pushing forward on behalf of others. But here, that comfort has been stripped away. The other paladins are with family, taking the time to reconnect with the people that they left behind. 

You weren’t given that opportunity. The friends that you thought you might return to had been taken from you by the bombardment. The whole squadron. Everyone you’d trained with. Their names line a monument, and your moments walking through the Garrison are haunted by the loss of their presence, like a void that has seeped through the building. 

You sit in the quiet hospital room, and listen to the soft tones that tell you Keith’s heart is still beating.

You have to believe that he’ll recover. He can’t be another name on the monument. You wouldn’t be able to stand it. You push your hand under his limp fingers, hoping to feel something. A part of your brain keeps waiting for that story-book moment where he feels your touch, or hears your words, and opens his eyes. 

Even hope feels distant. 

You may have survived by making yourself numb, but now you can feel that choice closing in around you like the jaws of a trap. 

  


* * *

Keith

* * *

  


So much light.

So much painful light.

Moving your head brings sharp pain, an icepick above your ear. The pain ebbs and throbs with your heartbeat, and you press your cheek more heavily against the pillow, trying to breathe shallowly so that the movement of your lungs doesn’t bring more agony. 

The headache doesn’t go away, and the darkness and soft support underneath you is confusing at best. You’re not sure where you are. You were in space; flying the Black Lion... pushing the carcass of the robeast away from Earth. You can tell you’re not in her command chair anymore. 

You lose track of those thoughts. Time passes. When you wake up again, the muffled thump of your heartbeat doesn’t inflict so much pain. 

Braving the light, you narrowly open your eyes. Shimmering and painful, the light edges the vague forms around you with golden halos. Movement draws your eyes. You can see your mother's silhouette, sitting next to a broader figure.

Maybe this was it.

An afterlife. You'd never expected an afterlife. Or, you hadn't thought much about one beyond the Black Lion's mindscape. If there was an afterlife, you expected to awaken there. The thought brings a sadness, a stab of pain at the lack of stars and galaxies in the pale, washed out light here. You’d need to find Shiro. You were meant to be with Shiro. If it had all ended, that would make everything worth it. Shiro had died, you remember suddenly. 

So Shiro must be waiting for you.

Groggily, you decide that you should say something to your parents. They’d understand. You had to find Shiro. 

"Mom? Pop?" you try to whisper, but the words stick in your dry throat. You’re not sure if you can form the words; your lips feel leaden.

Distantly, you place the blame on the painkillers; whatever is in your system is strong and it plays with your sense of time. You blink with the effort of trying to speak and it’s dark, the liminal light extinguished. Immediately, you start seeking the starscape in the darkness. Instead, you see only gray angles, hints of windows, blurry man-made interiors. Someone moves beside you. 

“Mom?” you ask, your voice gone hoarse and thin, barely something you recognize as your own. It’s like you’re trying to talk underwater, or through rocks. Your throat feels torn up, the vibrations of your own whisper tearing at the cells. You had something to tell her. You’re not sure what it was anymore.

Even the strangely murky quality of the atmosphere can’t disguise Shiro’s quiet voice. “No. She’ll be back soon.” 

A sense of relief crashes over you. Shiro’s there. You found each other. You try to focus but your eyes still burn, and moving your head reminds you that the headache is still a very real threat. Everything that you can hear comes through sort of muffled, as if your head’s been stuffed with cotton, or shoved underwater. 

You reach out blindly towards the voice. Pain tugs softly at the back of your hand. “Easy, you’re still connected to uh… many things…” Shiro says, but you feel warm fingers interlace with your own and you drink in the comfort. 

“Can’t see…” you admit, the words still a struggle. Trying to scrape the fuzz from your tongue with your teeth does nothing. Everything still tastes vaguely metallic. Stale. 

“The blast was pretty big…” You recognize Shiro’s quiet voice, his tender one. “You’ll be recovering for a while.”

You grunt because that’s about as much communication as you can summon. You feel like you’ve been through hell. For a moment you consider hiding it, mimicking what Shiro would do in your place, and dismiss the thought as quickly as it came. It’s pointless. You’re glad you don’t need to put on a brave face right now, because you’re exhausted. Wrecked. You try to find a pun for Shiro with that, but fail. 

You gather up the courage to try to find a few more words. “We all survived?” Right now it feels like the answer won’t be real, even if it might be painful to hear. The unreality is a sort of protection.

“Even Kaltenecker.” 

You squeeze Shiro’s hand, trying to anchor yourself. Your fingers respond so slowly; the effort is overwhelming. There’s so much more you want to say. You feel the drugs pulling at you again. You struggle to keep yourself awake. 

With a jerk you bring yourself back to the present and… “Shiro?”

“I’m here.” You relax a little, but don’t relinquish his hand. 

“You’re ok?” 

“I’m fine, Keith.”

You don’t think he can be, but that’s the answer you’re always going to get. “We’re alive?”

“We’re alive.” He sounds so confident, so reassuring that you immediately trust him. You let go of the struggle to make sense of anything else, knowing that Shiro’ll watch over you. 

The sense of peace and safety lingers for a moment. 

You try to pull his arm closer, a little unfettered. 

“Stay?” you ask, because the nightmares feel too close while your mind floats untethered above your body like this. There are more words that need to be said, but although you’re pretty sure you took down a Galra warlord, an armada, and robeast bent on the destruction of your planet, you can’t seem to manage a simple conversation. 

“Of course, Keith.”

You hear the scrape of metal over linoleum as Shiro shifts his weight, dragging his chair closer. That’s not what you wanted, although it would have meant everything to you three years ago. 

No. You’re tired of the space between you. You’re tired of worrying about risks. It’s not confidence so much as it is a medicated apathy. You throw yourself at the mercy of the drugs. You pull his human hand to your cheek, bold in your need for contact. “Closer,” you demand, sleepy detached from the notion of consequences. You can feel him hesitate. You can practically hear the gears turning in his head. He’s thinking carefully about it. 

The room fades in and out for you, and you’re not sure if you’re passing out or just blinking. Time is difficult. You’re uncoordinated, and you know your bed is narrow but you somehow manage to writhe your body until you’re against the side-rail, shifting so that there’s space for you and Shiro. 

You’re pretty sure you feel the tape yank at the hair on your arms and leg as you move, you don’t want to think about the tubing, but although the sharp pinches register, they’re distant and the sensation disappears just as rapidly. Everything that’s not Shiro is inconsequential. 

You think you should remember things that are important. To you, the dip of the weight on the bed beside you is possibly one of the most important events after the war. 

In the hazy golden glow of whatever painkillers are in your system, you try to hang on to every spark that flies across your skin as Shiro folds himself carefully around your body in that narrow, flat hospital bed. You try to resist sleep as long as possible, wanting to stay awake to remember this. It’s only a few moments before your eyes are too heavy.

When you wake up in the gray shadows of a hospital ‘night’. There’s an empty chair beside the bed, and fragmented memories that you can’t quite classify as dreams or wishes. When you try to sit up, one of the monitors beeps a steady complaint, you’re surrounded by nurses in scrubs, and you lose even the fragments of memories in the chaos as they resettle you. 

  


* * *

  


Your mother records all of Shiro’s speeches. Krolia leaves the little holo-drive with you and you let it project onto the wall between sessions with the nurses and doctors. You can’t quite tell what her smile means, but she seems serious enough when she tells you, “So you can watch the history you made here.”

The news slowly starts to make more sense. 

So many creatures are helping Earth reconstruct. It’s touching. From what you hear, Olkarion is a stable base now, helping to organize defenses against pirates and warlords and helping survivors to rebuild. 

A lot of help comes from outside your own solar system. 

  


* * *

  


It’s a few weeks before you’re released from the hospital. You have a lot of time alone; although Krolia, Kolivan, and Shiro visit often and the cosmic wolf shimmers into the room when it suits him. 

Once again, you’re starting with next to nothing. You don’t have belongings here, not anymore. When you sign your discharge sheets, Shiro brings you a uniform, and you change out of the shapeless hospital gown and drag the orange and white up your arms. The starched collar irritates your neck. The uniform gives you a strange sense of deja vu. Still a cadet, after everything, even though if you look outside you can see the glimmer of the particle barrier, the five lions sitting nearby, aliens in the street. You change into the uniform because Shiro brought it, and walking out in a hospital gown would prick at even your lax sense of dignity, but as soon as you see Kolivan you’ll ask for a blade suit, or possibly the red paladin armor, if it still exists somewhere. 

You’re not the cadet you used to be. 

  


* * *

  


With your release from the hospital, cleared for flight, you feel the need to move. 

You twist your grip on the handle, shifting gears as the bike flares to life below you. The one between your thighs is a new build, a little lighter than you expect for its size. With a fierce gnawing nostalgia, you want to know what happened to Shiro’s sleek red racer. You wonder if it’ll still be parked out by the shack, or if someone had taken it after the Blue Lion left with you all. 

“Ready?” Shiro looks over, straddling his own hoverbike beside you. 

“Born ready,” you say with a smile, sliding your goggles down onto your head and setting them in place. It’s almost a physical craving; to feel the wind in your hair as the speed pulls tears from your eyes. You jam your heel down and the m-field generators kick in with a sliding whine, the fans turning you into the center of a dusty explosion on the yard. 

You’re attuned to the man beside you, and you hear his own bike without having to look. The goggles dig into the crest of your cheeks. You try not to open your mouth when you grin. 

With a twist of your wrist you set your bike in motion. It glides. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll eventually appreciate this new model. The improvements had initially been offensive, a reminder that things weren’t how you left them. But the bike responds to the shifts in your shoulders as if it’s telepathic, and you slowly test out a few small turns before angling at the orange barrier between you and the desert. 

It feels so strange to be back here, you think, as the shield flickers to let the two hovercraft out of the Garrison. The hexagons seal behind you and you head out towards the ragged desert, spurning the roads. 

There are shallow craters, new features dug into the landscape, but their raised sides are softening in the wind. Wide, glassy lines mark out stretches of laser-fused sand. 

If you’d been one to curse, you would have. Instead you can feel your face tighten as you slow your speed, standing over the bike’s seat to get a slightly better view. You follow a memory, heading towards tracks you once knew, jumps and drops that you wanted to show off on, an old buried need for Shiro to see how much you’d learned rekindling with your return to this territory. 

But years of bombardment had changed the landscape. 

You slow the hoverbike as you skirt around new formations. From the top of a plateau, you can see huge furrows torn into the landscape. 

There are wrecks among the blast marks, too. 

You survey it. You can see a few dots moving over the hulking metal carapaces. Scavengers? Wildlife? You squint, but it’s too far away to tell. 

You turn a contemplative look at Shiro, who pulls up beside you. 

“We’ll have to find a new course to race on.” His words are light, but you can see the same disappointment in the way he clenches his jaw. There’s no going back, no reconnection to those relatively carefree days. 

Shiro looks out over the torn up desert, contemplating. 

For a long time, you look only at Shiro. 


	2. Chapter 2

  


* * *

Shiro

* * *

  


“Do you think any climbs are still out there?”

You glance over at Keith. He’s sprawled over the couch in your quarters, his feet in their regulation black socks kicked up over the orange upholstered arm. He’d thrown his uniform jacket over the chair and is looking relaxed in his sleeveless undershirt as he thumbs through an old dogeared climbing guidebook he’d dug up somewhere. 

His attitude, like it often had, stands out in contrast to the rigid Garrison pre-fab. Your assigned quarters have the same layout as the space you’d lived in with Adam, all those years ago, just purged of personal touches. You hadn’t exactly brought anything back with you from space besides the warships that crouched on the tarmac outside.

Your own perch at the kitchen counter is surrounded by datapads and paper files. The challenge of facing another situation you weren’t trained for has you solidly entrenched in ‘leader’ mode, so you take Keith’s words at face value rather than acknowledging the wistful longing underneath them. 

“If they are, I wouldn’t trust any of the bolts. Or anchors. Or even the rocks. This area’s been under heavy bombardment the past few years. Everything’s probably full of choss.” You set aside your black-framed reading glasses, and rub at your eyes. You’ve been up too long, yet another night trying to take in both the history and the current situation. You owe it to Keith to try to shed the weight of being ‘Commander Shirogane’, but remembering things that you used to like doing for fun feels unreal. Like taking the hoverbikes out a few days ago, and realizing that the old saying that you couldn’t go home again was bitterly true. You’re still numb to it all. 

Especially here. It hasn’t been easy to adapt to being back at the Garrison. The halls are haunted by the ghosts of people you thought you were going to come back to. It had been horrifying to learn that you were the last of your classmates. Everyone you’d trained with had been killed in the first battle. 

You can feel the way Keith’s trying to make sense of your depression. You’re not sure what you can offer. Despite your survival, you feel like you’ve been broken so many times over. The pieces barely hold together when you’re alone. But Iverson had asked you to act as an ambassador with the alien species where you could, and Sam was deferring to you with technology questions, and the Garrison was hungry for your experiences. Your ‘expertise’. You couldn’t even escape your obligations by dying, apparently. 

“We could go see what’s out there.” Keith pulls himself more upright on the couch.

“I don’t think that’s a priority.”

You wonder if it affects him too. Being thrust back into this, remembering where things had been left on earth, before the Kerberos launch. You think he’s handling it better than you. At least, you don’t see him regressing into the young cadet you left at the launch site, where you’d kissed his cheek in a gentle acknowledgment of his obvious crush. With the breakup so close to the mission’s start, you’d been an emotional wreck. You’d always tried to keep the mess your personal life was far away from Keith, but you’d been weak that day. You’d needed something good. Something hopeful. 

It was echoed in how you’d recently weakened to his requests when he was delirious and recovering, giving in to the need to feel Keith against you. It could have been for the platonic reassurance that he was there, that he was breathing. But when you’re honest with yourself you know that’s not the truth. It’s not the time to think about that, though. 

Like back then, it’s easier now to throw yourself into your work than to sort out your own feelings. 

You become aware that the silence isn’t quite so easy. When you look up, Keith is studying you. He has dark smudges underneath his eyes. 

He holds your gaze, challenging your assessment, perhaps. Then he shrugs and looks away. The move guts you. There it is. There’s the cadet that doesn’t want to let himself get close to anyone, doesn’t let himself want anything. You should be doing a better job of looking out for him. 

Keith carefully places the book back onto the coffee table. 

“My mom’s visiting next week,” Keith says, surprising you by shifting the topic. It still sounds strange to hear Keith say things like that. His mom. He’d been defined by his lack-of-family, as much as Shiro had been. 

It’s a safer subject. “That’ll be nice. I bet you’ll be happy to have the space wolf back.” 

“Yeah. She’ll also be bringing some of the Blades with her. There’s a branch that’s starting to do more reparations work than espionage.” When you look over at Keith, he’s still staring down at the guidebook but you can tell he’s not reading. 

“Is that so?” you ask, keeping your tone carefully bland. 

Keith shrugs. 

You feel like you’ve lived this before, watched him leave with the Blades. You did, but it was in a different body. Not quite you. Everything from that stretch of time feels like a fevered dream. You try to pin your thoughts to the present. This should be a second chance. ‘Commander Shirogane’ should have some words for him. If you were really the person everyone saw you as, the right words would come easy. But it’s Keith, and Keith’s outgrown the platitudes that you find so easy to offer starry-eyed cadets. You belong with us, you want to say, but the words stall on your tongue. You don’t want to trap him here. And the Galra are half his heritage. 

Instead of encouraging him to stay, you rub your forehead, feeling the threat of an oncoming headache. “Is that what you want to do?” 

Keith shrugs again. 

You think you can read him so clearly. He’s not going to let himself want anything. 

“Anyone would be lucky to have you.” The truth in those words is so large and overwhelming it’s almost painful. “And you know you’ll always have a place here, if you want it.” You choose your words carefully. You skirt around ‘with me’, because Voltron feels less and less of an option for you. Black hasn’t spoken to you since you were stripped away from her mind. 

And truthfully, as much as you want to defend, you’re tired of seeing loss. You want to build something new. You can understand the attraction. But as soon as repairs are done you know you’re duty bound to track down the origin of that robeast.

Keith nods. You blame the fluorescent lights for how dull he looks. The Garrison’s lighting flatters no one. 

“The Atlas should be ready to launch again in a few months,” you remind him. “I think Iverson expects everyone to take some time for themselves before that. If you head off-world…”

“I’m not going to leave until we know for sure that no more of those robeasts will target earth. We’re going to have to take out the source.”

You nod, not surprised that Keith’s thinking along the same lines you are. 

It reminds you that you haven’t seen anything on the dredging efforts recently, or tracking the engine signatures back through space. Reluctantly, you pick up your reading glasses and drop back into your work, flipping through pages of messages on the datapad, trying to filter the emails from the astrophysics lab and the deepsea excavator teams. There had to be some new information somewhere. 

Except there wasn’t. 

By the time you give up, ready to call it a night, you realize Keith has fallen asleep on the couch.

It’s like a moment that slipped free from time. Ever since you’d gotten wrapped up in the little fiery thief’s life, way back before the Kerberos mission, he’d been making a home for himself with you. He’d been in and out of the apartment you shared with Adam so often you almost expected to see him on your couch rather than not, back then.

The fondness threatens to overwhelm you and you shake your head to clear it, before getting a thin olive blanket from your storage shelves. You drape it over Keith, trying not to wake him.

You tell yourself to head back to your bedroom, but stay frozen at his side. There’s a desire to shake his shoulder, to offer to share your bed. Your heart catches on the inside of your ribcage. 

The light from the hallway paints a silvery shine on the scar tissue along his cheek. I love you. In his actions, he’d underlined the sentiment. You could trust that Keith’d be there for you, always, without demands, without expectations. It was the one thing you had absolute faith in.

You’ve never had to deliberately answer someone’s open declaration. There had always been a plausible deniability to the start of your past relationships, a teasing touch after too many drinks, a dance that went just a little too far, a dare, a cover, an excuse. Keith’s honesty burns too hot for maneuvers like those. 

In the end, it’s the memories that stop you from reaching out. It’s just not the right time, you tell yourself. Keith deserves more than to feel like he’s a convenient replacement, even if that’s far from your intentions. You grieved Adam’s loss long ago, but these rooms are haunted. 

You turn out the lights and head to your empty bedroom, hoping that the ghosts of long-ago will let you rest, too. 

  


* * *

Keith

* * *

  


There’s something about the mix of ionized atmosphere and synthetic fuel that makes the good kind of tension grow between your shoulder blades. It’s the scent of adventure, the promise of speed and something new. You take a deep breath and let your eyes sink shut, luxuriating in the sounds of the airstrip around you. There’s a low rumble, something you feel in your chest rather than hearing it, the burn of a transport coming in from the upper atmosphere. Its shadow hangs larger than anything human-built, and in your imagination, it still carries that gunpowder smell of space. 

You think about that, wondering where it came from, and where it might go next. There was so much promise. The large landing field is kilometers away from the parking lot you’re standing in, half frozen between the shuttle you’d taken out there and the hoverbike you’d requisitioned. Your hair’s getting long, but not long enough to stay tucked behind your ears when the wind catches it. 

You take the helmet from the hoverbike. It’s not yours, and you don’t really want to think of the reason why so many of the base’s vehicles are sitting about unused. You could come with me. In the end, you hadn’t said the words to Shiro, though. The little shack isn’t something you want to show off, although he’d been there before. You want to get it in order before your mother arrives. It had been years since you’d been out there, but the memories of the scraps and the sorrows, the signs of a life of pure survival, weren’t something you wanted her to think of. There had been so many other things to focus on the last time you’d dragged Shiro to safety there. Too many things in the shack were from a period of life that you needed to reframe. If it was still in good repair, if you could fix it up a little, if you could purge the sadness from the walls, maybe then you’d bring Shiro out there again, too. With a new futon, or couch, or even just a few sleeping bags for nights under the stars. 

If it was still empty. 

You wonder idly if someone has moved in, claimed squatter’s rights. The radio equipment was probably the most expensive thing out there, and even that had been old before you left and hadn’t been worth much, other than sentimentality. Not much of an attraction for anyone other than a collector. 

You load the bike with things you might need: food, water, a sleeping roll and head off. The feel of the wind in your hair is invigorating. You push the bike faster and faster, careening over the landscape’s rough edges. There are more furrows out here now, and your memories of it are woefully out of date. Deep black gouges from rogue shots, twisted shrapnel and new formations challenge your dexterity. You frown at the landscape when you pull up. At one time, you had known the horizons here. Some of the rock pillars have fallen, but others are still standing despite the years of bombardment. You lift up your goggles, in hopes that changing the tint will change the view, but there’s no shack where you expect it to be. You cruise out in slow circles, the hoverbike skidding out over the smooth glass where the sand had melted in places. You power down the bike and jump off, walking a little ways over the rough ground. You go over a few hills. At higher speed, the churned up earth had looked fresh, but walking over it you can see the small scraggly little bits of plant life just barely hanging on. 

You smile, and it tugs at the scar on your cheek. At least something will bloom after it rains. 

Eventually, you find some chunks of concrete, a twisted bit of metal that might have been part of the shack’s frame in the sand. The little bunker and the shack itself, well, they’ve pretty much been erased. You feel a pang of regret. You’d spent a year or two living there. It had been the only place that had been yours. Truly yours, for better or for worse. None of the foster houses or the boarding house at the Garrison’s school, the dorms… none had really been yours like that little shack had been. You’d loved it, had loved turning the abandoned shell into a refuge from the world. Loved that little garden you convinced to grow despite the wicked heat. You think you can see parts of the garden fence around too, but if you’re honest with yourself, the scraps of old weathered wood could have been from anything. 

You let yourself grieve for a moment, feeling the loss of yet another place. You wonder if it had been Voltron itself who had destroyed it, or if it had been a stray shot during the years of Galran bombardment around the Galaxy Garrison’s shield. There’s not really a point in dwelling on it. You head back to the bike. This time, when you kick it into gear you let your momentary contemplativeness keep you at a lower speed, and you watch, really watch, the landscape around you. You can pick out some things that are still the same. 

It’s long past dark by the time you get back. You’d headed out in the twilight. It had felt fitting. Now it’s those quiet hours where no one else should be around. A sort of shanty-town had sprung up around the Garrison base, overgrown with refugees and tourists. The little lights that were on showed that not everyone was on the same schedule, maybe they’d come from places with different day lengths. Or maybe they were like you, and couldn’t sleep. 

You gear down the bike and slide it into a free spot. Passing your ID badge over the scanner, you catch a shuttle back to the Garrison’s residential complex without thinking too hard about where you are going. 

  


* * *

  


You’re knocking at the door before you think better of it. It is late. Maybe you should have woken Iverson’s assistant up to tell him to re-bunk you in the dorm with other homeless Garrison employees instead. 

But you’ve always been drawn back towards Shiro. He opens the door after a few moments, dressed in a sleeveless shirt and comfortable pants. 

You offer a regretful smile and hitch the camping bag higher on your shoulder. “The shack’s gone.” 

Shiro swears softly before he catches himself. “Come in,” he says, wiping his hand over his jaw as if erasing his initial reaction. He looks tired, but that’s been rather normal, recently. You can’t tell immediately if you woke him up. He backs away from the door and you step into his space. You wish it felt more like him, but the space is still pure Garrison. Painfully utilitarian. Boring. No photos. No medals, or trophies on the shelves. Even half-dead plants would have been a welcome addition. 

“You can stay with me,” he says. “I’ve got the room.”

You hadn’t even considered the possibility of any other response. You swing the pack off your shoulder. “Great,” you say, stretching your back out. “Thanks.” Your body hurts after the ride. You forgot how physical hoverbikes could be. Funny to think that you’d grown soft in an interstellar war. 

He’s at the small closet in the hallway before you realize he’s pulling out sheets. “I have a sleeping bag with me,” you say, dropping onto one of the stools at the counter. It feels surreal. The counter is at the wrong height now, too low to match what you remembered. “It’s ok if I crash on your couch?”

Shiro pauses. “If that’s what you want.” He puts the sheets back after you nod. 

“That’d be great.” There’s a thick sense of relief in your chest. 

The door to his bedroom is open, and for a moment you’re curious, wondering if he’d added anything more personal there. You banish that thought as quickly as it arises. 

“Were you sleeping?” you finally ask. 

Shiro shakes his head. 

He’d often been the one to guide your conversations, and it felt odd to have to stumble for words now. “I used to blame the insomnia on being out in space.”

He gives you a half-smile. “I’m sure space doesn’t help. Is there anything that helps you sleep these days?”

You’d sat up talking so many nights in the Black Lion on the way back to Earth. You both knew there wasn’t much to do when your body refused to stop, refused to step down from high alert. You give a half smile. They’d dosed you heavily at the hospital to get you to sleep on their schedule. “I don’t think they want me taking those drugs anymore.”

You don’t want to keep him up if he wants to sleep though, so you get yourself sorted. Shiro watches you from the hallway as you pull your sleeping bag from its stuff sack.

It’s just a Garrison-issue sleeping bag, but as you smooth it out along the couch you’re thrown back in time, thinking about all the weekends Shiro used to take you out camping when you were a cadet. Before Kerberos. When everything had been easier. When everything had been different. “Think you could get a weekend away?” 

“What are you thinking?” He sounds weary. Maybe he needs this as much as you do. 

“Just… out. Somewhere. I don’t think there’s a national park anymore, but I doubt anyone will complain about campers.” You desperately need to connect to who you were; and a part of that is the need to reconnect with Shiro. He hadn’t bit at your earlier suggestions, so you plunge ahead, just asking directly. 

“You sure that’s a good idea?”

You look down at yourself, at the way clothing that used to be form fitting is now folding and whispering against your skin. “The physiotherapist cleared me to start training again. I want to get out of here.” The walls are stifling. Between the particle barrier and all the lights you can’t even see many stars, and it’s killing a part of you. “Let’s just go, Shiro.”

You realize you’ve caught Shiro at a disadvantage. He’s sleep deprived, exhausted—and pliable. 

“I’ll see what I can do.”

From Shiro, it’s as good as a promise. 


	3. Chapter 3

  


* * *

Keith

* * *

  


You leave the hover bike packed up so that any critters that might be around won’t get into your food. You throw one of the packs over your shoulders and look back at Shiro. 

“Did you pack lunch?” Shiro asks. He’d had to work late the night before, leaving you to get supplies together.

“Yes.” A smile tugs at your lips.

“Water?”

“Yes.” You start off down the trail, hoping that it encourages Shiro to join you. 

“A map?” 

You turn back to raise an eyebrow at Shiro. “I have an old topo but it could be wrong. Nothing’s been updated since...” You raise a hand at the changed landscape, reluctant to put the destruction into words. “We can do an out-and-back if there’s been too much rockfall.”

Shiro runs a hand along the back of his neck. You wonder if his new hair colour will stay or if his roots will come in dark. You can’t picture it. 

“Warm clothes? Rain gear?”

You turn a fond look back at him. “Do you trust me?” 

He shoots you a look. “That wasn’t what I meant,” he mutters under his breath, but the interrogation ends. Your heart stammers in its rhythm, because the unimpressed, slightly-amused mix is something that reminds you of _before,_ when questions like that had been necessary.

Back when you had first been growing into your friendship, when you’d warily agreed to head out climbing or hiking with Shiro and his friends, you’d been woefully unprepared. It wasn’t your fault. You’d never had the chance to do anything like that as a kid, not like Shiro and his friends. Your smile widens in triumph, and you turn back to the trail, already feeling more light-hearted. 

The kilometers fall beneath your hiking boots as you wind your way up the switchbacks. When the trail narrows, you reach out to touch the rock that rises steeply next to the path. It still feels solid, unchanged. It’s reassuring. 

Shiro keeps an easy pace with you. 

Neither of you like to ask for breaks, but you both take every opportunity to leisurely feel out new lookouts, watching the scenery slowly change with your altitude. It’s completely different to working out to exhaustion in a small room on a ship. Here, it feels like you can breathe, like the lack of confinement is a weight lifted. 

At one of the little outcrops, you take a sip of water, and find a place to sit. You thought you’d recovered, but the hospital stay, the battle, all of it, has sapped some of your endurance. Shiro shadows you. You lean back against the rock, waiting for your heartbeat to slow a little. 

“I always thought we’d get the chance to explore other worlds like this,” you admit softly. Things you want have always been closely guarded secrets. You’d been to other worlds, which still feels strange to think about, but you hadn’t had the chance to really enjoy any of them.

“That’s what I wanted, too.” Shiro shields his eyes and looks out over the craggy badlands instead of at you. You knew there’d been more to his dreams when he set out for Kerberos. 

You glance quickly over at him, then pull your hat down lower over your eyes. “If we get a chance, when this is over…”

“Yeah?” he prompts after you trail off, looking entirely too fond and kind. 

Even out here, it still feels like too much to say out loud. To say that you want to head back out there with him. Maybe all Shiro wants to do is to stay on Earth. Maybe he feels at home here, in a way that your parentage and upbringing prohibit. 

But you and Shiro have been friends so long that words aren’t always needed. “I’d like that,” he says softly, replying to the unspoken end of your sentence, and the warmth that floods your chest rivals the sun overhead. You shake your head, trying to clear it, and pull out the sunscreen. 

Obligations still stand between now and that tentative future. There’s a chance that the Atlas will be able to track down whatever remnant of the Empire that managed to make a robeast. If Voltron—and Atlas—can take that stronghold out, then maybe the Universe can find peace, the war-machines can be co-opted into more rebuilding and negotiation exercises, and you and Shiro, well… you’d be free. 

It’s an unfamiliar concept. 

“Here,” Shiro offers his hand. You half-smile and give him a squeeze of the sunscreen too. He surprises you by massaging it into the back of your neck instead of using it himself. When you don’t react, he continues, making sure the backs of your shoulders get covered. His hand slips under your t-shirt, thorough as ever, and your eyes fall closed because the feel of his hand on your skin is nearly overwhelming. 

He turns his back to you after, strongly hinting. You take a deep breath and tell yourself that this is nothing. You smear a thick layer of sunscreen onto the back of his neck. You can’t resist running the backs of your fingers against the short buzz. The short white hairs are softer than you expect, they’ve lost the prickliness his undercut used to wield. 

His shoulders and triceps are pretty well covered by the stretch of his tee but you pay him back, running your fingers inside the hem of his shirt sleeve, massaging the lotion deeper into his muscles. He leans back against you, catlike in the way he demands more pressure. 

You’ve both put up walls, divided yourself from others. This is the most touch you’ve shared in a long time. 

You catch yourself a moment before you would have leaned forward to rest on his back, lost in your own thoughts. “You should be good.” You try to reclaim some of the casual atmosphere, standing up and stretching. You haven’t let yourself think of touching Shiro in a long, long time, and the flicker of feelings you thought you’d buried is unsettling with how powerfully they are returning. You decide that the break is over, and pack up, not looking when Shiro follows you more slowly, trying to outpace the thought that you could just keep touching him.

It’s easier to focus on talk of undiscovered places, on climbing and hiking itself. The physical challenges are clear to you in a way that the unknowns that stretch between you and Shiro aren’t. 

You end up scrambling over rockfall a few times. Nothing too dangerous, but the path is definitely unclear in places. 

You start to slow on the uphills. Your hiking boots grow heavy, and your toes scrape against on the uneven ground more than once. 

“We should head back soon,” Shiro says, after making a show of checking the time. 

You don’t really want to admit that you won’t be able to do the full loop, but Shiro has been dropping his pace to match yours more often than not in the last stretch. 

“If you want.” 

  


* * *

Shiro

* * *

  


There’s a contentedness to the exhaustion that pulls at you that night. Once you might have complained about the thin camping mats. Now they’re a luxury. The ground is hard beneath them, but it’s not the Black Lion’s deck, or the Altean alcoves or other memories you have of places you slept that you try to shove away.

You wake on your back, worried that you’d been snoring. The empty desert leeches heat away quickly. You can feel Keith shivering beside you. 

This uncertainty is an unfamiliar guest. You figure you can blame exhaustion, you feel like you’re nearly delirious. Or else… you can just avoid questions entirely. Objectively, it makes a sort of sense that the cold would hit Keith’s slender form more quickly. You turn onto your side, rationalizing it by the thought that it’ll keep you from snoring, and the three person tent is only really for three people if they’re Pidge sized. 

You cautiously move closer. 

_I love you._

They had been the first words you’d been able to react to. The words that had broken through Haggar’s control. The words that you’d never mentioned again. 

You know you’re not acting very brotherly as you edge close enough to feel the fine tremors running through Keith’s body. He can’t possibly be asleep, but you think you can feign your own slumber. You try to shut down this part of your brain, you don’t want to think anymore. You slink an arm around him. Gently. As if it’s automatic, just a reflex. 

You keep your breathing slow. Keith seems frozen for a moment, then gives a sleepy sigh. He shifts his hips back, slotting closer to you. 

Your senses are so alive. It’s your only salvation that there are two layers of sleeping bags and heavy clothing between your bodies. 

You wonder if you should say something. Your courage fails you, and you stare at the curve of his hair, just a vague shadow in the darkness of the tent. For once, you don’t curse the insomnia. You listen to the insects outside, and try to memorize the feeling of his body against yours.

  


* * *

  


You open your eyes to green and orange light streaming through the translucent fabric of the tent. Awareness slowly creeps in, another luxury—usually you woke with a jolt, ready to fight whatever had awakened you, but here, there was a sense of safety around you. You were still on your side. You’d also managed to throw your leg, still in your sleeping bag, over Keith’s at some point in the night. Your face is pressed into the back of his neck, his long hair parted as if you’d nuzzled into place. 

For a moment you let yourself smile, and you consider just staying there. 

Cautiously, you lift your arm. Your heart clenches when you realize that Keith had been holding on to you, even as his fingers slip free with a sleepy lack of strength. 

Oh. 

It’s almost too much. You roll over onto your back, stretching slightly and trying not to disturb Keith. 

Keith makes a sleepy noise. It’s not something that you should consider cute, but it is. You hold your breath, but Keith grumbles something unintelligible and rolls over. His head finds a pillow on your shoulder and you wince, the metallic socket can’t be comfortable. Keith seems to agree, moving in closer. He half curls up over you. He’s still half-trapped in his sleeping bag cocoon so it’s not… intimate… 

Or at least that’s what you try to tell yourself as you silently curse at the ceiling of the tent. You move slowly, stroking his shoulder slightly. It’s hard to resist. He’s a heavy sleeper at times. You know this. 

You’re not really one for staying in bed after you wake, but disturbing Keith now would be a terrible idea. After all, maybe he’s so deeply asleep now because you kept him up earlier. 

You listen to the wind, the early calls of the birds outside. It’s nice. 

  


* * *

  


You must have drifted off again because when you wake up you’re alone, and the tent is hot. The birds are silent; likely gone elsewhere to escape the heat of the day. You look over at the empty sleeping bag beside you. Your hands scrub over your face and you wonder just how Keith had woken up. What he might have thought, if you had still been curled around him. 

Moving slowly, you unzip the tent and stick your head out into the cooler air. Keith was a little ways away, the camp stove in front of him hissing. He looks effortlessly at home out there, flannel tied around his waist, hair gathered into the beginnings of a small ponytail.

You shake out your hiking boots before folding your body over to pull them on. “Hey,” you say. 

“Mornin’,” Keith replies, wrapping an old shirt around his hand before he reaches for the coffee maker. He looks over at you, his eyes dark and huge and kind. You think he turns back to the stove too quickly after meeting your gaze, and wonder if you should have some regret for the last night. 

You rub at your hair sleepily, and finally stand up.

“Never thought you’d be the one cooking me breakfast,” you say, your mouth running before you can stop yourself. 

Keith freezes, and for a moment something flashes over his face. 

Too many things lie unspoken between you. _I love you. You’re like a brother to me._

A small, wicked smile curves over his lips though, and he edges away from the moment before it becomes something more. “I like my pancakes without a layer of char on them,” he says, his face back to deadpan but you think he’s teasing. You’re not that bad a cook. He hands you one of the tin mugs. It scorches your fingers, and you breathe out a sigh, grateful that there’s something you can feel. 

“There’s powdered milk if you want.”

You grunt something that could be agreement. 

You look around, find one of the chairs, and shake the dust from it as best you can, before setting it down near Keith. The scrape of the spatula and smell of something like bacon compete with the wildness of the desert. The coffee is hot and bitter, and the once-familiar rush of caffeine sinks into this new body, chasing away the fog of sleep and your unguarded words. 


	4. Chapter 4

  


* * *

Shiro

* * *

  


Later that morning you head off towards a hike you remember from before. Your steps are light; you’re excited to share this with Keith; the waterfall at the end of the gorge is spectacular. 

You keep a surreptitious watch on Keith out of the corner of your eye, letting him set the pace. Even in the middle of the breathtaking landscapes, it’s Keith who captures your attention. More than once you have to remind yourself that Keith’s still recovering. It’s selfish to consider anything beyond that.

You’re close to Keith. Your friendship runs deeper than anything else you have. You know he’d be at your side at the barest hint of a physical threat. Of that, you have no doubts. But emotionally…

In some ways, he wears his heart on his sleeve. In others, he’s guarded and wary, even with you. You’re pretty sure that he’s always spoken the truth of what he feels for you, but the moments that drive him to putting those feelings in words have always been buried in extreme situations. All his actions—when he was in control of them, when he wasn’t on the brink of death or loopy with drugs—could be respect, the brotherhood you’d forged by serving together. It’s only moments of desperation that bring out the hints that he might feel anything more, but those suggestions are gone as soon as you’re out of danger. You’d never stopped to really talk to him about it. Your own footing is shaky when it comes to moving forward. 

If there are deeper feelings there, Keith can’t simply be dismissed as a teenager with a passing crush anymore. More than that, you respect Keith. If he doesn’t mean anything beyond brotherly affection, you don’t want to push him. And then there are the added layers of initiating any moves, since by most standards, you could still be considered as having a higher rank. You know better than most how fraught relationships in the Garrison can be.

At least you’re pretty sure you’re not in his chain of command anymore. If _he’s_ flying the Black Lion—or with the Blades, or… well. You can try to tell yourself that you’re not his superior officer, not after what you’ve been through together. But that role has been ingrained in you, and stepping outside those boundaries is… a lot. 

In your daydreams, when you’re the most hopeful, you can envision it coming together someplace like here. A hike through the narrow gorge, following a silvery spill of water to the secluded lagoon at the end. You could swim, could pull Keith to you, slowly test out his reactions. If you don’t lose your nerve. If you do this, here, now, it’s not going to be something accidental, not something you can wave off as a misunderstanding. There’ll be consequences you’ll need to face no matter what. It’s a heavy thought.

The trail starts to descend, demanding more attention as the path quickly disappears in a tumble of boulders, but it looks like something you can both easily climb down. 

You peer over the edge, frowning. “Maybe we should have brought the jetpacks.” 

“This sunshine feels better than Altean armor.” Keith gives you a faint smile.

He’s right. He slips past, nimble as he easily switches to scrambling downward. Keith has always been so determined to charge ahead. You end up following him rather than waiting to scout out the best descent, not wanting him to get too far ahead. You need to be able to reach him in case anything happens. That part of your brain is too difficult to shut off. 

The shade that rises up around you is a relief after the sun. 

  


* * *

  


You ease ahead of Keith when you realize that you’re getting close to the end of the gorge. 

When you see the rock wall ahead, you bark out a sharp laugh. There’s not really any other response. 

“Well.” You rub a hand over your mouth, as if you can take back your hopes. Calling the water level low would be an understatement. There’s not a waterfall so much as a damp trickle seeping from the far wall. What had once been a little lagoon now looks like a wide puddle. You can’t help your wry smile. What else can you do?

Sometimes, the universe’s sense of humor is darker than your own. 

“Not quite the sight it used to be.”

You hear Keith’s soft huff, a sound somewhere between laughter and agreement. 

Still, you’re nothing if not stubborn. You’ll make this something. It may not be skinny dipping, and it may not be romantic, but it can still be… something. 

You take off your boots and roll up your pants. At least one thing has stayed the same; the water is as shockingly cold as you remember. You wade in, cautiously balancing on the submerged rocks. The water is clear, but even near the center of the shallow, it’s barely up to your knees. “I guess we won’t be swimming.” 

A small series of ticks catches your ear and you turn to see a line of ripples spreading over the flat surface of the water. Keith’s still crouched by the edge of the water, smiling serenely. You break into a grin, glad you’d kept the promise of a swim—and anything else—to yourself. 

You slog back to the bank, and join Keith in looking for flat stones to skip. The lines etched in one catches your eye; and you wonder if there are fossils in the area. Matt would know. You flip shattered rocks for a while, searching idly to see if you can find any other imprints revealed by rock spills from the stratified cliffs on either side of you. 

You share lunch in the shade, lingering over the shared food. It’s almost procrastination the way you draw out the break, but the passing time doesn’t give you any sign that it’d be a good idea to act on your previous thoughts. 

Eventually, the water loses some of its luster, and you look up to see the pale gray of clouds covering the blue of the morning’s skies. You stare up towards the stratosphere, and instead of saying what matters, you decide on saying what’s safe. 

“We should head back before we get caught in a shower.”

The rain holds off but that night the clouds obscure the stars. A faint smudge of moonlight makes one horizon a slightly lighter gray. The glow of the fire on Keith’s face is perfect, and conversation comes as easy as breathing. You can’t even bring yourself to regret not saying anything.

You’d be lost without this friendship.

  


* * *

Keith

* * *

  


You wake to the sound of tapping against the fly of the tent. You’re confused for a moment, resentful of an intrusion, before you realize it’s just a light rain finally catching up to you. 

Your face is pressed against something warm and you blink a few times before you realize you’re curled up around Shiro. Not just curled up next to him. Your arm is around him. Again. 

Barely daring to breathe, you slip your arm free and roll carefully onto your back, stretching out.

You used to be able to share a sleeping space without overstepping. When you’d found his clone, you’d wrapped him in your own blankets, sleeping against the side of your own bed while he recovered, keeping a desperate watch as you convinced yourself he was really there.

But this is different. You’re home here, in a way. It’s familiar territory outside. Your subconscious apparently wants to push against other limits, though, in a way that makes you uneasy. Shiro’s been through so much. You don’t want to demand anything else from him. 

And you’re not sure you’re ready to lose the hope that’s sustained you for so long. 

The light outside is still faint. You stare upwards and watch the shadows of the raindrops fall in lines against the tent’s fly, each little drop merging into the next before they go streaking towards the ground. 

You hear Shiro shift as he wakes, stretching as he silently takes in the weather.

You glance over as Shiro pulls his datapad from the hanging pocket in the corner of the tent. A warm orange glow coats his features as he looks at the radar maps. “The rain’s not going to get worse, but it won’t get much better.” His voice is rough with sleep. It’s endearing. He looks over to you. “Do you want to head back? The bike should handle fine in it.”

You think of what’s waiting back at the base. You think of the piles of paperwork in Shiro’s apartment, of the slow creep of stress, of the demands of the Garrison, the overwhelming needs of a decimated world in the process of rebuilding. Childishly, you wrinkle your nose. 

“Not really.” The camping spot you’d chosen is on a high enough plateau that there’s no real risk of flash flooding, even if the rain gets worse. You roll over, turning towards Shiro, and the closeness in the little tent, the intimacy of being so close with Shiro once again crashes into you and leaves you a little stunned. He looks at you, still reclining on his pillow, and your heart hurts with how much it wants this.

“I have a pack of cards,” you offer instead.

He returns your gaze steadily, and you wonder what he’s thinking. You hope that he doesn’t insist on going back, and you hold your breath until he nods. You can’t help your quick smile, but otherwise, you feel too content to move.

It’s Shiro, ultimately, who breaks the fragile moment, sitting up to unzip the door. You sit up too, watching the rain roll over the landscape. The clouds feel low, like they’re pressing you down. You could almost reach up and touch the foggy blanket.

He heads out, and you start to rearrange the tent, unzipping both sleeping bags and laying them out, covering the gap between the air mattresses as best you can. They’re still warm with body heat. You pull everything away from the edges of the tent, hoping that the rain doesn’t start to seep in. You think that the tent should be good quality, given what you’d traded for it, but who really knew?

The drumming of the rain fades abruptly, and you look out to see Shiro fixing a tarp above the tent. It gives him more space to work in as he sets up the camp stove. 

  


* * *

  


When Shiro crawls back inside, he’s cold with the damp outside air, but brings in coffee and instant oatmeal, so you forgive him. 

You finally reach outside to your pack and get the cards. There are two sets in the little box. “What do you want to play?”

Shiro laughs. “War? Crazy-eight count down?” He reaches out to take the cards, ready to shuffle, but he pauses when he sees the smaller deck in the box. His tone softens. “You brought the flower cards too?” 

“I saw them at the exchange… I couldn’t resist.”

Shiro gives a small smile. “I remember teaching you to play.”

For some reason that chokes you up. “Yeah,” you say roughly, embarrassed at the emotion that is suddenly in your throat. “That’s why I got them.” You’re not sure what happened to Shiro’s deck. Maybe it _was_ Shiro’s deck, stolen out of the little shack before—or after—it had been obliterated. “I don’t know if I remember the scoring hands,” you admit. You’d never had anyone else to play with. 

“I do,” Shiro says, voice still incredibly gentle. “I can teach you again.”

It throws you right back to the days before Kerberos to see Shiro setting out the hanafuda cards. Back then it had been something special, a game you’d never seen before, something you shared only with Shiro. You had lived for what he taught you—at the Garrison, on trips outdoors, on lazy afternoons. Even now, after all he’d been through, he still had that spark, that gentle light that he loved to share. It was hard not to draw closer to him. 

You’re content, even as you lose the first few rounds. Shiro still guides you when he sees things you miss. His helpful comments slow down as you start to remember.

Shiro beats you with a hand of brights including the crane and the sun cards that you always think of as _his,_ worth triple the boar-deer-butterfly combination you’d gone after, and you can’t make up the difference with the poetry ribbons. 

Shiro’s smiling.

“What?” you ask, pretty sure you hadn’t been speaking out loud. 

He tilts his chin towards your cards. “You haven’t changed. You always did like the animal cards.”

“We’ve all changed.” The words slip out before you can reconsider them. You didn’t mean it in a negative way, but the careless words make you think of the world outside, the devastation across the globe, the last few years in space. 

Everything Shiro went through.

Shiro grows still. You can’t read his face anymore, and he’s not meeting your eyes. 

You lick your lip, mouth suddenly dry. 

What hasn’t changed is how much you love him.

He starts to move when you do, reaching out for the cards at the same time. Your hands touch his. The metal of his prosthetic is cool under your touch.

He brings his other hand to yours. 

All you want is to find the words you need. All you want is to know that he knows how you feel. You’ll be at his side forever, if he’ll let you. 

You don’t know how much he remembers, but you don’t want a confession in the face of death to be the only acknowledgment between you. 

You pull back enough that you can speak before your nerve shatters. “You should know—” Shiro’s looking back at you when you open your eyes. _You’re my everything._ The words aren’t enough, and maybe nothing could ever be enough to encompass this feeling in your chest. Your words stumble. 

“I just… even if you don’t feel the same… I thought you should know…” Your fingers dig into the sleeping bags below you, seeking an anchor. Outside, the rain has picked up again. “I—”

“Keith,” Shiro says, in that soft way of his, and you have to shore up your walls because everything you are is ready to crumble. You can barely keep yourself steady, your heart is ready to shake your body apart. 

The press of Shiro’s hand over yours stops your movements. It’s weight is reassuring, a signal that Shiro isn’t about to pull away. 

“I know,” he says softly. 

He leans close, and your hopes flare, blinding and bright. 

You’re shaking as you lean over the cards. Gently, you press your lips into his. 

The soft touch of his lips dissolves your ability to think. He’s skilled at this, more than you, and his hand at the side of your face is guiding you, even now. 

You want everything so badly. Your hands turn frantic, and you’re holding onto Shiro as if he might disappear on you again. 

He’s solid beneath your hands. 

You kiss him again, not letting him pause, not wanting him to change his mind. 

His touch lights fires on your skin. There’s no doubt when you strip your shirt off, throwing it in a corner of the tent. You feel like you’re breathing harder than you should be, like this is a sport, or a battle. 

Shiro’s movements turn playful as he eases you back from the desperate edge that has taken hold of you. He skims his hands down your sides, and pulls you close again. Your own hands find the hem of his shirt, disappearing underneath. 

“We could take this slow,” Shiro says, and you kiss him like the pressure of your lips could erase that thought. His hands draw soothing strokes over your back and he pulls away a bit, matching his actions to his words.

The suggestion strikes at a fear that you didn’t want to have to voice. You shake your head. Your hair is coming loose from its tie, sticking to your lips. “What if we don’t get to have slow?” You search his face, hoping to see understanding. “Shiro, we have no guarantee of _anything_. We don’t know if there’s any more time for us. I could turn around and—” You don’t intend to babble, but the words just tumble free, like you’ve opened some sort of hellish floodgate by voicing them. You can’t keep them back on your own, and that task falls to Shiro, who hushes you with another gentle kiss. 

You need more than gentle though, more than slow. You push his shirt up, encouraging Shiro to slip it over his head. You lean down to explore the new territory with your lips. There’s not much thought behind it, you just need to taste him, to touch him. 

He shudders gently underneath you as you draw his skin between your lips, some deep need to bite driving you, and he arches into you as your teeth close on his skin. “Gentle,” he pants, and you try to control yourself, but his fingers are digging into you just as tightly, encouraging you. You surge up against him, and he leans back, just out of reach. 

“What do you want?” Shiro asks, his own words soft in the darkness of the tent. 

“Everything.” Your breaths are coming too quickly, something like sobs are threatening to break. You’re pretty sure that in your long history of battles, you’ve never been this vulnerable. 

Shiro pauses, punishment for your lack of words perhaps, and you make your frustration with his pace known in the way you grind against him. 

“C’mon, Shiro, please, just… let’s…” your teeth fasten gently on his neck and you pull away before you really bite, because you need a connection, need something deeper. “I want you. I want to feel you in me. Even if it’s just once, just this one time and we can go back to-”

Shiro catches the words. “If we do this, it won’t just be once.” He pulls away, looking steadily into your eyes. “If that’s what you want.”

The hint of the future is too much to contemplate, not when you’ve got Shiro half-naked in front of you. “Yeah,” you breathe. “I want that.” 

When he lowers you back, your heart is racing and you’re not sure how long you can hold on. Everything you never let yourself think, everything you never let yourself truly feel comes rattling loose inside your chest. 

Shiro could never disappoint you. He’s confident in a way that you can only hope you work up to. You’d feel like your responses are stumbling, awkward, but you can see the response that the little noises that slip free have on Shiro, and that’s enough encouragement in itself. Heat builds between you. Eventually you relax enough to accept his touches without flinching at the intimacy. 

Shiro eases his way into you. You pull him down close to you, needing the chest-to-chest touch. You’re about level with his collar bones, so you bite at his neck, his shoulders, demanding the pace with your hips. 

You crane up to suck at his neck. The way he thrusts into you makes you ache, makes you dizzy with the meaning of it all. 

In a distant, far away manner you’re aware that the corners of your eyes are wet. Shiro curls over you, bending sinuously so that he can kiss your face. It’s less contact, but more intimate. His thumb brushes your cheek. 

“Are you okay?” he asks, all gentle concern. If you stop to consider it, you’re really going to start crying, not just silent tear tracks, but deep, all-consuming sobs. 

“Yeah,” you whisper, relieved that your voice isn’t too shaky. “Please?” You tense around him and he takes the hint, moving again. 

He kisses your face over and over, and reaches between you. 

The noise you make is nearly a sob, and you twist your forearm over your face. It’s so much. It’s overwhelming and you can’t _look_ , you just need to feel. 

Shiro pulls your arm away from your eyes. He laces your fingers together. Your fingers curl into his hand, needing to grab onto something, anything, to keep you grounded. You keep your eyes tightly shut. He kisses the side of your face, open mouthed, panting, as he chases something just out of reach. 

His hand around you is quick, hard. Demanding, but never more than you can take.

You twist your body as you come, curling up and into his chest, pressing close to him. He holds you there as you make noises you’d rather forget. 

You collapse back against the sleeping bags, the rustle soft against your ears, meeting the racing rhythm of your heart. You feel wrung out and tired and absolutely blissful. 

Shiro moves slightly, and you close your eyes again. His hand is gentle on your face. “You’re amazing,” he whispers, all reverence.

He pulls away from you, and that moment of terror surfaces again, unbidden. You carry wounds on the inside; fear of loss, of needs unmet. You link your ankles together behind Shiro and reach out to pull him close again. “Keep going. I can take it.” It’s what you want. You’re not sure if it’s the truth, but you feel dazed, like everything’s a bit hazy and unreal.

He goes to touch you again, experimentally, but despite your bold words, you’re oversensitive. He settles back on his knees. Relaxed and blissed out, you just watch him move. He lifts one of your legs and you don’t resist, even when embarrassment threatens to crash into your hazy pleasure. You’d never deny him anything. He kisses your ankle. 

You stroke your hands through the mess on your abdomen, as if reassuring yourself that it really happened. Shiro moves gently, until he doesn’t, and this time it’s him hiding his face, ducking towards his own shoulder. 

He goes still when he comes, holding himself carefully away from you. You don’t put up with that for long. You pull him close, dragging him off balance. The weight of him on top of you is reassuring in a way that makes up for the effort it takes to breathe. 

“Keith,” he says when he can speak again. Your name is a prayer on his lips, whispered into your ear. 

“Shiro,” you answer in kind, in the shared, shorthand language that had grown and expanded to be able to contain almost anything. Stretching to rub your face against his, you feel the rough scratch of slow growing stubble against your cheekbone. 

You just want to listen to your combined heartbeats. 

He rolls off you, and for a moment, the loss comes crashing down around you and you move with him; as if by clinging to Shiro you can hold the moment steady in your memories. 

He links your hands again, draws the back of your hand to his lips to trace your knuckles with soft kisses.

You watch him. 

The tent is stuffy, humid with your breaths. There’s a stretch of time when neither of you want to move. Eventually, Shiro opens the doors and lets the wet rainy air sweep over you. 

It’s refreshing. 

You let your hand fall to Shiro’s chest. You trace through the slight dusting of hair that had reappeared there. It’s texture absorbs your concentration. 

His skin is warm, his breaths deep. The movement is reassuring. You feel demanding, but you stretch out your leg, pressing between his. His calves trap yours, and you hitch yourself a little closer into his side. 

He kisses you until your stomach starts growling, and the kisses dissolve into laughter. 


	5. Chapter 5

  


* * *

Shiro

* * *

  


You hadn’t realized how sleep deprived you’d been before you left the Garrison. You both had been. Somehow there, the fluorescent lights and trappings of civilization had kept you going long after you should have taken a rest. Although it wasn’t just the extra day of rest that had revitalized you.

You look down. Keith’s hair is a dark halo, the ends curling in the humidity, tousled from earlier. He’s asleep but his face is still tilted up at you. If his mouth wasn’t open and pressed to your bicep it’d make a pretty picture. 

It’s strange to reflect on—knowing both how you felt and that, maybe, on your own, you wouldn’t have acted on those feelings. It was more than rules. After all, you’d always gone into relationships knowing that even if they lasted, your mortality was likely going to factor into the end of them. Keith’s determination to keep you alive had been a huge part in cutting you free from that particular affliction. 

It’ll take more than a moment or two to really adjust to the idea that you may have a different sort of future. For so long, you’d been racing the clock with the pressure of your illness. Now, without an expiration date written into your cells, part of that burden had lifted. 

In your more self-aware moments, you’re pretty sure that you have a tendency to use work to replace that pressure. There is always another worthy goal: defending the freedom of the universe, getting Atlas to fly, being part of something that can defend even Voltron, letting the Altean magic use you as a conduit, raising the scattered human survivors up into the new space age… 

It had been easy to lose your sense of self in those goals.

You look down at Keith, taking advantage of this time you’d been given. The time he’d carved out for the two of you. Him being there with you is still a wonder. Once, long ago, you’d done everything you could to encourage him to grab hold of his own future. He’d excelled at every physical challenge. Even emotional ones—he’d taken the revelation about his heritage in stride, working his way up through the ranks of their Galran allies. 

If he wanted to go with the Blades, you were certain they’d be happy to have him. You weren’t sure if the Black Lion would be so happy to have you back. You weren’t sure if she’d speak to you again, not after you were torn free from her protection. 

You didn’t have that sort of uncertainty with Keith. 

You carefully sit up, shifting Keith back to the sleeping bags below. As quietly as you can, you leave the tent. The rain had stopped at some point in the afternoon, but the sand was holding onto the water, puddles spread across the landscape. You shift your pack up onto the wing of the hovercraft; nominally a drier area. You dig through it until you find your towel, and clean yourself off as much as you could before slipping into a comfortable set of clothing. 

You drag one of the damp canvas stools to the folding table. The tarp above had kept most of the rain off but everything still has a layer of silvery condensation. You set up the camp stove to boil some water and set about cutting the peppers and carrots to add to the instant noodles. They’re a little sad after two nights without refrigeration but you’re determined to take advantage of food you’re familiar with as long as you can. 

You don’t expect Keith to sleep for long. Neither of you are big nappers. You hear Keith stirring before the water has really had a chance to heat up.

He comes up behind you while you’re still slicing the carrots into thin sticks. You don’t let him interrupt your motions, although you’re very aware of his presence. His hands alight on your hips, almost without pressure, before he shivers and seems to give into the impulse, wrapping you in a tight hug. His chin is sharp against your shoulder. 

You stop moving and just try to carve the moment into your memory.

Slowly, he kisses the back of your neck, draping himself over your back in lazy contentment. It feels like his intent is just to be close, but it sends shivers across your skin. He smells musky, like sex, and something possessive flares in you. 

You use the knife to push the vegetables back into the container you’d brought them in, sealing it for later. 

You let yourself turn, let yourself pull Keith into your arms. There’s a faint ache at the back of your mind, the missed opportunities battling with the self-discipline and Garrison training that had precluded anything like this from developing earlier. 

Keith’s sleep-warm and pliable, easy to kiss. It’s almost strange how easy it is to find happiness when you let yourself. 

“Hey,” you say, breaking apart when you can’t soften your smile enough to kiss him seriously anymore. 

“Hey,” he echoes, looking down with a smile of his own. 

You reach out to pull him against you. “Is this okay?” Keith always seemed to give a greater importance to touch than you. You’re not sure where his boundaries are. 

“Mmhmm.” He closes his eyes and leans against you. 

You run your hand along his side, learning by feel how he holds himself still before relaxing into the caress. It’s something new to you to touch him like this; and maybe something new to Keith to let himself be touched. 

It feels like, for once, the universe is standing still for you. 

You deserve this, after everything else you both have been through. You look at Keith, closer than you’ve been able to study him before. You can feel his heartbeat against your own chest. Keith’s unlikely to verbalize his thoughts on this on his own, so it’s probably up to you to try. 

There’s so much more that you should sort out. 

“Should we tell the others when we get back?” 

“Tell them what?” Keith asks tersely, eyes narrowing. You can practically feel his desire to bolt away from discussing this. It'd be easy to go along with his lead, to avoid putting this new beginning into words. But what you’ve shared with Keith has never been fragile. And you’ve always been the responsible one.

“That we’re together.” You test out the word for the first time, not quite staring at Keith but incredibly attuned for his reaction. ‘Dating’ feels too mundane for what’s actually between you already. 

He’s still tense. And heavy. You stroke your hand across his back. “Not really any of their business,” he says, all defensive prickles. 

Your smile turns wry. “These sorts of things don’t stay secret for long.” You’d seen it, both from the inside of relationships and as an outsider. One gesture at the wrong time, a slip of the tongue… “I want to explain our situation to Iverson before someone gives him the wrong impression.”

Keith’s wariness increases, as if it’s feeding off your own worries. “We’re not _really_ Garrison anymore, are we?”

“Voltron’s not quite independent.” Not if the Atlas would be necessary for travel. They’d have a full Garrison crew with the Atlas, not just a pair of Alteans. With that came rules and regulations. 

Keith wrinkles his nose and turns away, hiding his expression, but he doesn’t pull away. He leans back against your shoulder. “Together,” he repeats your word from earlier. 

“Together.” You decide you like the word. It fits. 

The water hisses, beginning to boil over and Keith stands up to deal with that. You let him go, but your gaze doesn’t leave him. “Tell them what you want,” he says, shrugging before he uses a spoon to lift the rattling lid. 

“It really doesn’t matter to you?”

It takes him a moment to gather his thoughts. He picks up the noodle packets, tearing them open and dumping them into the water; following your plans easily based on the items on the table. You pass him the container of chopped vegetables and he adds them in. 

“ _You_ matter. I don’t care if anyone else knows,” he says thoughtfully. He leans back into your side. When he looks back at you, his eyes are shining in the evening’s golden light. “You’re everything to me.” His voice is soft, a contrast to the bold simplicity of his words. “Nothing is going to change that.” The way he says it makes his words a promise; he’s not going to let anything change that.

When Keith’s determined, nothing is able to stand in his way for long. You smile, believing that maybe there aren’t any obstacles that you won’t be able to face together. 

  


* * *

Keith

* * *

  


Shiro indulges you in a walk after dinner. You don’t go far from the campsite, choosing faint trails that wind through the scrubby vegetation and skirting around the lingering puddles. It’s easy to concentrate on the feeling of his fingers between your own to the exclusion of everything else. His palm is so warm compared to the air around you. 

It’s a more surreal experience than anything you’d encountered off-planet. 

Back at the campsite you linger outside, brushing your teeth. Finishing his routine earlier than you, Shiro disappears into the tent and you turn away, giving him privacy to change. There’s a strange sort of thrill in realizing that you don’t really need to turn away anymore, but some things are so ingrained that they’re difficult to quickly change. You turn off the solar lamp, and wait as your eyes adjust so that you can watch the sky. Most of the moving lights are ships now, not shooting stars, but you make a wish anyway because it reminds you of Shiro and days gone by. 

You duck into the tent. Shiro hasn’t separated out the sleeping bags. His headtorch, left in the corner, casts long, low shadows. You peel your hoodie off, certain in the knowledge that you won’t need layers to stay warm tonight. 

He lifts his arm, encouraging you over. 

You’d slept close the other night, but not like this. This is like coming home, a welcome you’d never allowed yourself to hope for. You fit your body against his, hyper aware of him beside you. It’s not easy to rewrite the boundaries you spent so long building up, thousands of days together holding yourself back.

You’re grateful for the darkness when he finally clicks the little flashlight off. 

Sometimes it feels like Shiro can see through your soul itself when he looks at you with his full intently. He traces your cheekbone with his hand, cupped fingers dragging along your jawbone. If you followed them, it would be easy to tilt your head and meet him in a kiss. You can feel a difference in his body language though, something that nudges you away from chasing that impulse. 

Instead, he rests his forehead against yours, and you wish the connection gave you a glimpse into his thoughts. He stays like that for a while, but because you know Shiro, you know he hasn’t fallen asleep. You’re content to share the air with him, letting time melt away and disappear into the drone of the night insects outside. 

When he finally speaks, it’s something that’s worth waiting for. 

“I love you,” he says. The words are powerful in the darkness. For a moment you stay completely still, not even daring to breathe. “Even when I didn’t think you wanted a relationship like this. I want you to know I’ve loved you in a lot of different ways over the years.”

Hearing the words unlocks a constriction around your chest, a tightness you hadn’t realized you were still carrying. The words aren’t a surprise, not really, but you hadn’t expected to hear them. Not this soon. 

“I love you too.” The words are faint compared to what you feel, but they’re the only ones you have. “I’ll always love you.”

Shiro shifts closer. He pulls your hand to his mouth, kissing your palm and holding it against his cheek. Your thumb rests against his lips, startlingly soft compared to the rough stubble along his chiseled jawline. 

This time, you’re able to match the tone of Shiro’s playful explorations. The desperation doesn’t crash into you. You get to lose yourself in a sense of wonder, in the pleasure itself. This won’t be the only time you get to hold Shiro as close as you want him. 

This is only the beginning. 

  


* * *

  


“Is that everything?” Shiro asks. He’s half inside the belly of the hoverbike, making sure the weight’s distributed across the cargo hold. 

You take one last look across the desert. The thin light of dawn washes out the landscape, makes it seem cool. “Seems like it.” The little tent, the remote campsite, the place so important to the recent changes your life was just gone. If it wasn’t for the mix of confidence and excitement that permeated your body, for the ache deep in your muscles, it would be simple to believe nothing ever happened. 

Shiro tosses something small at you. Your hand shoots out to catch it. You look down at the key fob and raise an eyebrow at him. “You sure?”

Shiro’s smile turns wicked. “Well, we could wrestle for it…”

You slug him in the arm as he laughs. 

“If you’re happy driving, that’s great. Don’t make me think just yet,” he says, only slightly more serious as he settles himself behind the driver’s seat. 

You grin and pull your flight goggles on. 

His arms wrap around you after you swing up. You tilt your head back into him and just breathe. There’s perfection in the moment. 

Maybe it’s alright that there won’t be anywhere in particular to come back to, no marker to indicate that _this_ was where the new phase of your relationship started. Maybe you never needed it in the first place. There are types of homes that can be carried with you; a sense of belonging that transcends the physical. 

Here, with Shiro, you’re home. 

_~Fin._

**Author's Note:**

> I’m on [twitter](https://twitter.com/HerPaintstrokes) where I retweet pretty things and occasionally post about in-progress writing. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!


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